We welcomed 2005 by heading north to one of our very favorite winter places - the Nooksack River, hoping to see if the Bald Eagles had returned for their annual couple of months of dining on the plentiful salmon spawning in the river.

I love driving past this area on the I-5. It's near the city of Everett and if it's not socked in with fog, it's very pretty. The large dark mountain on the right is Mount Pilchuk and on the left is snow-capped Whitehorse Mountain.

The Twin Sisters mountains welcomed us as we drove up towards the Nooksack River, but we were not able to see Mount Baker.

I love the shape of Sauk Mountain, near the city of Concrete. It looked especially nice with its dusting of snow today.

Oh boy - the rabbits at Clark's Cabins got a New Year's treat today. Tim bought a load of mixed salad and two bags of fresh carrots. I think they enjoyed a change from stale bread.

A small gaggle of Tundra Swans ran away at top speed as soon as they saw my camera.

Poor salmon - they go to all that work of swimming upstream and spawning and poof - it's over. They're left to become food for the gulls and eagles. You can see them floating bellyup in the Nooksack River.

A gull sets to work on one of the salmon. The air was full of the cries of swoopoing gulls and the Bald Eagles mainly watched from their perches in the trees at this time.

Here are pictures of two of the 39 Bald Eagles we saw today. Many were seen from quite a distance, no doubt due in part to the large numbers of birdwatchers around, trying to start their New Year with a large list of species.

We toured the Skagit River as well as the Nooksack but the pickings were even slimmer there :) No doubt we'll try again in the near future. I can't tell you how nice it was to be out in NO RAIN - a very good start to the New Year :)